Tony bounced back with two requests: links on inflation and growth ... to help him with his end of 1st year University exams. Inflation A very basic introduction The Bank of England knows a thing or two about inflation: take a look some of the ways that the BoE uses probabilities in its inflation work including fan charts MoneyWorld gives you a database of inflation stats and a couple of basic definitions The ONS’s latest view of inflation plus a few useful links on the right hand side of the page From the UK Parliament is a pdf file on the value of the Pound from 1750 1998 Along the same lines but much more varied and comprehensive is Here you can find costs and values from Ancient Rome via medieval England to modern Britain … Norway, the USA and more. The Economist has an excellent glossary that includes inflation lots of links in the inflation section, too. Samuel Brittan says that Inflation Can be Too Low A slide based view of inflation, unemployment and expectations looks as if it aimed at MBA students from City University Under the heading of Revision Notes: Government Finances from learnDirect with related links on the left hand side of the page From the House of Lords: Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England - Report a LOT to read through, with the inflation control aspects to scroll for! An exam paper from the University of Exeter Principles of Economics ... no answers of course! From the Oxford School of Learning: generally aimed at A level but will apply to 1st year Undergraduate: Outline the Monetarist and non-Monetarist approaches to inflation This might be useful: an essay on Control of the Monetary Environment from the University of Essex Happy reading Tony! DW

Made a custard layer cake on Saturday and you can only imagine how good it is! DW

On Thursday evening I baked a coffee cake and finished it off with butter cream and a dusting of cocoa powder ... then I called it a Cappuccino cake. Marvellous! DW

I just spent 20 minutes telling you all about Dima's Leaver's Ball at which he looked very smart as did his partner Charlotte. I told you about the 6 month long saga of the evening suit. Then I pressed the wrong button and lost the lot. In the end, we have to say that Marks and Spencer came out of the process with their ceridbility dented and we ended up with a decent suit with just 4 hours to spare. DW

I am happy to announce that there are quite a few cherries on our old cherry tree this year and the apple tree looks as if it might be festooned with apples. The plum tree didn't blossom at all this year and the second cherry tree blossomed but it doesn't look as if there is going to be any fruit this year: we moved the plum tree and the second cherry tree is new this year. The pear tree has fruit on it, more than last year too by the look of it. There are birds in my garden that have taken a dislike to the marigolds I transplanted at the weekend: they've eaten or destroyed them, the bleeders! As a matter of interest, bark chippings are a great way of keeping the weeds down and keeping the soil most. They are also a great way for birds to want to throw them all over the place as they move them around in search of insects and larvae. Messy bleeders they are! DW

Paul wrote this over at AccountingWeb I have created an Excel file, but everytime I open it, 2 identical files are opened. They are shown as .xls:1 and .xls:2. Why is this happening, and how do I stop it? In Explorer, only one file is shown, as .xls Paul Sanderson Jim added I think that you have managed to set up two different views of the sames files (hence, why only one file in Explorer). I have accidently done that before and never been able to figure out how to get back to just one view. Mark told Paul and Jim how to get rid of it: You've opened a new window within a spreadsheet. Easiest way to get rid of the extra window is to open the file and close one of the windows by clicking on the "x" box on the top right hand side. Not the "x" to close Excel but the one below that. This closes the extra window. Then save the file. This will get rid of the extra window permanantly. I piled right in with how they got it in the first place and then confirmed how to get rid of it: One really useful feature of Excel is that it allows us to take a file, any file, and open two or even more views of it and have those two or more views on screen at the same time. This is useful where you are working with a large and/or complex file and need to see what is happening here and there at the same time. It's also useful when developing complex formulae and so on. However, you don't want it so here's how to get it and here's how to get rid of it: to get it: Open a file in Excel click Window in the menu bar at the top of the screen select New Window click Window again select Arrange choose Tiled (choose any of them but just choose Tiled for now!) hey presto what do you see but TWO views of the same file: one called book1:1 and book1:2 to get rid of it: close the one you don't want, and it doesn't matter which one, by clicking on the X in the top left of its screen and it will disappear like magic and you will be left with little old book1 on its own. So there you are! DW

Yesterday in Oxford I came across a sign in Longwall Lane (or is it Street?) that announced, appropriately for this august city I felt: Advanced Warning ... this road will be closed ... Now, plebs like you and I have to make do with Advance Warnings but in the city of dreaming spires they are just that cut above! In the consulting room of one of Oxford's hospitals was a measuring scale for measuring people's heights ... vertical, attached to the wall ... but at the top, the slidey down bit was a child's plastic rule that was hanging on to the thing by a scabby piece of sellotape (Scotch tape if you must). I wish I'd had my camera. More seriously, the doctor began the consultation by having us sit in silence as he read Mrs W's notes (for the first time by the look of it) and then announced he'd like to have seen Mrs W's X ray plates to help with his consultation but they were "lost in the system" somewhere: she'd never seen this man before and since she's only weeks away from a major operation, we felt it was laughable that he tried to make such light work of such a major omission. That's Modern Britain for you and yet people are fighting Tony Blair's NHS reforms! DW

Nick asked about an update to my easyJet case study and whether there is one. There isn't yet but following on from today's annojncement from the company of their pre and post tax loss for the 6 months to 31 March 2003, there soon will be. Here is what I said to Nick: Dear Nick, Whilst I am intrigued to review easyJet again since they are about to post a LOSS this morning for the first time ever, I don’t have anything in the pipeline today but could well have within the week. I said in my original assessment, or when I was introducing it, that I didn’t like the way that easyJet’s pricing policy was really just a scam and having researched some of their prices recently I have been proven correct! From their web site this morning: easyJet plc generated a loss before tax, goodwill and non-recurring items for the six month period [to 31 March 2003] of £24m which compares to a reported profit of £8.3m for the same period in the prior year. The loss after tax for the period was £46.9m, which compares to a reported profit of £0.8 million in the same period of the prior year. They have posted a PDF file of their interim results and a very quick look through them shows that their Operating Costs are all drifting upwards, contributing significantly to their loss. I really don’t like the way this company operates and never have. They sacked their founder Stelios a while ago and my prediction is that this company with either close relatively shortly or they will have to revise their mode of operation despite their Chairman’s claim in their latest review that easyJet continues to demonstrate that its business model is robust and that there continues to be strong demand for low fare, point-to-point services between major European airports. Their model may be robust; but their ability to manage that model is open to doubt! Anyway, go and take a look at the ratio analysis section that I recently wrote for Biz/ed: there as you will see that I use easyJet together with British Airways for some of my analysis. Then click on this and scroll down the list of companies in the database that I put together and you can do lots of calculations on the data relatively easily from there … for some reason easyJet is out of alphabetical order in that list. Do you know www.tutor2u.net? They recently put together a couple of case studies in PDF format and the report on the European Airline Industry although rather weak could be useful for you. Best wishes DW

I have now finished a new section for my commercial arm: introduction to bookkeeping and accounting: four PDF files, four Excel files. This is a general introduction that assumes some knowledge of bookkeeping but takes you through the ideas step by step with loads of exmples and the Excel files help to confirm uour learning and provide you with infinite practise: honest, you've got to see it to believe it. Only £10 ... designed to help you with your ACCA exams (Paper 1.1 eg), CIMA exams, University exams, A level exams ... and real life! Go to my eShop Window and see what it's all about. The best on the web at the price: you really would pay a vast amount more elsewhere. DW

Katie wanted to know where she could find out about absorption and marginal costing. Yours truly provided the following listing: Dear Katie, Here are a few links to get you started on absorption and marginal costing. This page compares process costing and absorption and marginal costing Here's an article from the examiner of ACCA Paper 1.2 that's worth a look A PowerPoint Presentation ... it starts with a spelling mistake! Rather a childish look at the topic, from Cambridge University, surprisingly: it's a PowerPoint Presentation. Test your knowledge with Drury on line ... an MCQ test on this topic A very short overview The ever brilliant Biz/ed has a worksheet with links to their virtual factory that might be of use A reasonably extensive and useful looking introduction An exam paper from the University of Teesside that will help you with your revision at least! I have a page on this topic, of course! Finally, this looks useful There you are Katie, a review of some of the basic sites that can help with absorption and marginal costing. Best wishes DW

Is all ecommerce this difficult? Trying to get a client up and running with PayPal has turned into a challenge for her! ecommerce is based on brilliant and simple ideas but I have found the reality to be a real struggle. Everything's click, click but the final hurdles are sometimes so huge! I've been in the ecommerce game for around 6 weeks now and already I have stories to make your hair curl!! DW

Mario's a deep thinking lad from Italy and this is what we talked about. Dear Mr. Duncan I am an Italian student from Rome university and I am doing my final dissertation on cost of capital for telecoms and on the different approaches in calculating WACC. I was wondering if it was possible to have some research on the differences between the different CAPM's models (linear, non-linear and multifactors models). I found a study done by Wright, Mason and Miles on the subject but it seems to have a very statistic view about the CAPM's models. Could you please, if possible send me any presentation (power point) or study that explains in a more economic way why we should use a model rather then an other to better calculate the cost of capital for telecoms? Thank you in advance for all your patience and help Best Regards Mario I asked for a bit of time! Dear Duncan, I think that the only parameters that can vary are beta, risk free and ERP. What evidence can I use to make these parameters vary? Is it possible? Which are the latest methods for estimating the risk-free rate and ERP? There's some debate on-going as to what both have been doing recently, after a long period over which the ERP appeared to be stable. There's considerable room for disagreement about betas, related to the standard criticisms of the CAPM, and also disagreements about what frequency of data to use, whether to include parts of firms that are overseas or regulated, and so on. In contrast to all this, the debt-based component of the WACC is relatively straightforward to calculate; although regulators are suggesting that optimal rather than actual capital structure should be used for calculating the WACC for regulatory purposes. Thank you again Best Regards Mario Here's what I found: Dear Mario, I am sorry to be late but I have had a web site crisis! Anyway, I don’t know how much I can help but here are a few resources I have found on the CAPM: Revisiting The Capital Asset Pricing Model by Jonathan Burton looks non statistical at least but it is a bit old now! Aimed at investors so it is general but it has some graphs and basic formulae. Again for investors but with some additional links to people who seem to be important in this area business.com has a fair number of articles that you can access and I think at least some of them will be useful. Here’s a rather cheesy CAPM calculator but take a look at the links on the right hand side of the page! This is probably too basic for you but ... A mighty PDF file from Canada called The Capital Asset Pricing Model: Equity Risk Premiums and the Privately held Business. Another one from Canada This might be a useful link for you: to someone’s Blog! Worth a try: strike up a conversation with him at least! Specifically for telecoms, I found one, two (this is just a summary, though), three (79 pages from London!), four (Australian) and five , a whopping 154 pages from OFTEL in the UK I hope that’s enough to get you started, Mario. Let me know if you think I can help in any other way. Best wishes DW

Wow! A week has flown since I last communicated! Had a problem with my very first online payment via PayPal that is as yet unresolved and that could scupper everything I'm trying to do to earn a living. Bleeders! DW

Which animal will invade a garden over night and launch itself at some pots that contain potting compost replete with seeds that are germinating but that have yet to show their leafy heads and proceed to dig out the middle of every single pot? Well, when I find that animal, it's for it. I had a tray of 30 pots all so filled that were all so emptied on Wednesday night. Bleeder! I'll spiflicate it if I get it. DW

Celebrity spotting? Mrs W got very excited at Heathrow yesterday as we waited for Dima to get back from France and up popped Liz Hurley complete with baby and nanny(?). She needs to do some work on her bottom or her jeans as said bottom didn't fill the jeans in the same way that the rest of her body fills the rest of her clothes! Her husband/boyfriend, turned up later in a wheelchair and Mrs W wasn't impressed: Liz, you could have done better for yourself! DW

Lovely weather again although I'm as stuck in my office as everyone else. Since I work at home, though, I can potter around the garden for a break as and when I need a break. DW

Went to Bath on Easter Monday and was really surprised to see that the majority of building in the centre of the city are genuine Georgian: up to 250 years old or so. A marvellous looking place. The royal crescent and circus are spectacular and well worth the voyeuristic visit. I heard that one house on the royal crescent sells for £2 million: ridiculous! Had a decent meal at the Arabesque Lebanese restaurant in the Podium Centre: I like what I've seen of Lebanese food and this was a buffet worth trying out and it wasn't that expensive either. Had a shock at the Roman Baths: they wanted £8.50 EACH for us to go in ... we didn't. The city bus tour wanted £7 EACH for us to sit on their bus as they whizzed us round the city ... we didn't. Nice city, tourists beware of the serious damage that can be done to your wallet. DW

A message to small business people the world over. This is what happened last week. Our shower sprang a very small leak. I offered to repair it but Mrs W was aghast at that so she found a plumber/tiler to do the job. He turned up, kept his baseball cap on as he came in the house, quoted for the job and promised to return on Friday. Friday came and so did he: baseball cap stayed firmly on his head and when he said he'd finished Mrs W carried out an inspection and asked him to tidy up a small part of the work he'd done to a fairly poor looking standard. After rolling his eyes heavenwards he launched off into a tirade about customers like us! He increased his price, too, on the basis of materials costs. He won't be back ... ever! DW

A small crop of questions shows the value of www.duncanwil.co.uk! Katie still wants to know when my financial accounting pages will be ready to buy: Dear Katie, I'm working on it! I have spent a very frustrating time trying to sort out my eshop and have found ecommerce "experts" are almost useless in terms of what they will do for free. That is now behind me and I will be posting three management accounting sections for sale later today. I will then begin working on your suggestion and would estimate that within the week I will have a completed package. OK? Thanks for remembering: your exam in early in June isn't it? Plenty of time to stay with me and succeed!! Graeme is a Benford's Law geek like me and he asked Duncan, I have an interest in the practical application of Benson's Law to catch financial fraud. Do you have, or know of a a website that has a downloadable spreadsheet for Benford's law that I could run my own data series through? Regards Graeme Here's what I was able to do for him: Dear Graeme, I mess around with Benford's Law from time to time and develop my own spreadsheets. I have attached one of my spreadsheets: let me know if you find it difficult to work and I'll explain! Best wishes Finally for now, Frank wanted the complete case; power point presentation, tables for all days' output and the weekly combined total, solutions. Frank I sent it to him! More glorious weather forecast for today! DW

Good news everyone! I have now finally got my eShop open for business. If you are in the least bit interested in GCSE Business Studies examinations for the coming Summer series, you NEEEEEED to take a look here Case Study Shop Window for full details and Business Studies Shop to buy and pay by using the highly secure PayPal system It has taken too long to get this shop up and running but it's there now and over the next few days you will find three or four major new management accounting resources for sale ... watch this space. DW

Tony replied and said: Hi Duncan, Once again, you hit the nail on the head. Thanks Tony There you go! DW

Flushed with success, Tony came back with a request for information on goal congruence in budgetary control systems. Well, without being too specifc, I decided to research goal congruence in general and let Tony pick the bones out of it! Here's an almost anaonymous page that compares the Balanced ScorCard with GE's famous 8 key result areas: when you go to that page you'll see why I say it's almost anonymous. This PDF file looks good: a fancy tile in academicese but the content looks good: Graham Francis provided an NHS based example for my book! This pave has a huge number of ideas that relate to budgeting and other things too. Again, semi anonymous ... people who put together such good resources have the right to tell people who they are: don't be so shy! Elementary but you never know: a presentation on basic budgeting Slightly more advanced but not the bee's knees! Chris Lamb's excellent listings service comes up with another excellent list, on goal congruence this time, of course. Some intriguing diagrams here! Another basic page, another PDF file. Finally, you might find this short page sparks something too! That should be useful, tony! DW

We've had a month of the best daffodils that I've seen: honest, I've found that watering them every day has made them tall and strong and long lasting. That was in the back garden and now the daffodils in the front garden have just started to open, along with the tulips that are there too. Marvellous! Dima's away for the Easter Holiday so Mrs W is giving ME all the jobs that either he normally does or that we normally share! What a life! DW

This morning, the BBC is talking about a meeting of firefighters in England today ... are they the same firefighters who have just swept through Iraq? Just pointing out the nonsense that can arise when clots start to steal language from another culture. We have firefighters x 2 now and they do completely different jobs. Let's go back to firemen and gun fighters! At least we know where we are with those two. DW

Steven wrote a rather cheeky note: Could you please let me know the web site for Canada which can provide information about the following: 1. evolution of accounting in canada 2. accounting standards setting boards in canada 3. accounting professional bodies in canada 4. governmant influence 5. environmental factors cheers Steven Cheeky because it looks like his assignment, nothing more or less. Still, given my come one, come all attitude, I am here to help; and this is what I have found for him. I couldn't find just ONE web site to answer this question, Steven, so here is a good essay to start off with AccountingEducation. It's a teaching guide has been prepared to provide users with an overall understanding of accounting and assurance standards in Canada. You can also go here which is the web site of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. There's the Accounting Standards Oversight Council of Canada, too that has a lot to think about. I did a search for accounting professional bodies in canada and found this page from Hong Kong ... scroll down for Canada ... if you're searching for other countries, take a look, there's just a few more! Here's a really useful page from IASPLUS.COM, that fantastic IAS/IFRS based resource that has generally useful pages, too. There you are Steven: a cracking start, I think! DW

Follow up from Tony. He replied as yet another satisfied customer: Hi Duncan, Thank you so much. The material you have found for me is exactly what i'm looking for. Thanks again, Tony Aw, shucks, I'm blushing! DW

Let me put on record just how useless the BBC weather forecasters are. There! Done! They promise sunshine and we get cloud. They promise temperatures that mean we can fry eggs on the pavements, t'flags as we call 'em up North and my new Peach tree ends up half dead from frost bite. They promise 'unusually warm for the time of year' and Mrs W sits in our South facing living room wrapped up in a blanket in the middle of the day. Rubbish. They also tell us 'right now' this and 'right now' that and the glorious weather we're having (as if!) will hold through Thursday ... what on earth does that mean? Rubbish weather forecasting and rubbishEnglish! DW

Tony from Liverpool wanted to know what I could tell him about the Behavioural Aspects of Budgeting This topic is one of those that a search on the internet that returns virtually nothing but syllabuses from Universities, tables of contents or seminar schedules. Here’s the best I could find. Firstly, though, take a look at chapter 14 of my book: Cost & Management Accounting published by Prentice Hall. There’s a set of basic lecture notes from Exeter University at Lecture 16 and Lecture 18 although the author makes the mistake of calling zero base budgeting zero based budgeting in lecture 16: an elementary and unforgivable error. Chris Lamb’s excellent service out of UNL comes up with this massive resource list under the heading of Behavioural Aspects of Budgeting: and under the heading of budgeting and budgetary control Under the heading of organisational goals and Investors in People have an introductory page on this sub topic, too. In spite of what I said at the start of this, here is an academic page that looks very useful as a starting point This is written in academicese so needs to be read carefully. It’s also long and needs to be filtered I have been hearing several people talking about participation and ownership recently in connection with managing change and here are a couple of pages linked to these ideas: not all directly connected with budgeting, but you can extend the ideas: firstly two from yours truly: e budgeting zero base budgeting Here’s a seminar schedule that gives a few ideas: just scroll down to BARRIERS TO SUCCESSFUL BUDGETING A PowerPoint presentation with some good starting points although the author makes the mistake of calling zero base budgeting zero based budgeting: an elementary and unforgivable error. Finally, you might find this useful Best wishes anyway, Tony DW

I took my life in my hands and reworked my template myself. I have lost all of the customisation I made but that wasn't too serious. So the glorious look and feel of this Blog is restored!! DW

Brian wrote, from Singapore I think since his surname is Ng! This is what he wanted to know and what follows is what I was able to tell him. Dear Sir, I would like to know the answers regarding:- 1)explain briefly the IAS 1 including fair presentation,accrual,consistency and going concern and suitable examples to illustrate the answer for each explanation? 2)Objective of financial statement to provide information to users.Who are the main categories of users of financial statement of their needs? List and describe the Qualities or Characteristic of useful information. Thank You for provide the answers to me. Hello there Brian, Good to see you visiting my IAS pages. Let me point you in the direction of my other financial accounting pages for your answer. I have a few pages on the basic introduction to financial accounting that I have constructed to apply both the UK accounting and IAS accounting and US accounting ... Go to my home page and choose the financial accounting section and then follow the links for accounting concepts, the going concern concept, what are the objectives of accounting. Don't forget to read through the IAS Framework page in the IAS section, too, though. I hope this is all OK for you but let me know of any further questions. Best wishes DW

They've ruined the look of my Blog and they won't sort me out! I'll do my best over the weekend. As an indication of what I'm doing now, here's some correspondence I had with Katie. Hi, My name is katie, im currently doing ACCA part 1..I was wondering if you had any relevant notes on profit and loss accounts and balance sheets? Your website is really good, the best for accountancy. Any help would be appreciated as exams are so near. Many thanks. Dear Katie, I know the ACCA syllabus in part and know that I can download the whole thing from their site. I am currently building a commercial arm to my web site and am happily prepared to start the financial accounting section with your topics in mind. Depending on how it goes and how long it takes to mark up into HTML, it could take a week to 10 days to prepare the first section that would deal with P&L accounts and balance sheets then we would move into double entry ... around two weeks all in all from now. Each section would be comprehensive and would consist of the basic theory and underlying practice and will have loads of examples from me and for you to do, with solutions; plus end of section questions with fully worked solutions. Take a look at www.manacc.duncanwil.co.uk to see what a section generally comprises. I would then charge you just £10 and you would have full and free access plus email support for each section. Please let me know and I will move this job higher up my list of priorities. You would find that the sections would have a fair amount of ACCA focus so it would be targeted at your studies. Let me know what you think. Best wishes Hi That is a very good idea! In the meantime, you got any good sites on financial accounting? Katie Dear Katie, You are probably finding there my web site is one of a kind in that it is difficult to find a fully focused set of resources ... what you are looking for. That's why I am developing my own site in this direction now. Still, I did a search for Accounting resources on www.bized.ac.uk and came up with this In a couple of weeks, I will be sending you a message with my latest resources based on your message. Best wishes There you go: working really hard to be the best on the web at what we do! DW

There's something wrong with my Blog pages. As you might be able to see as you read this, the layout is manky. I've writen to www.blogger.com whose fault it is and can only hope that they can sort it out for me. Otherwise my perorations don't look so smart, do they? DW

The death of Cost Accounting? Dima showed me some of his notes from school the other day and it sounds the death knell for cost accounting ... my life is now in turmoil. If you want to calculate the cost of ingredients for a meal in a restaurant or at a food processing factory, go to your local supermarket, butcher's or green grocer's, work out the cost of the ingredients and mutliply the total cost by 0.7. To find the selling price of your product, take the cost you have just calculated and multiply it by 3 ... hey presto! Let's boil that down to an even better process: find your costs and simply multiply by 2.1 (that's 0.7 * 3) and whoosh, the selling price in a nonce! Have I been wasting so many years of cost accounting endeavour? DW

My good email friend Kenneth from Malta is a hard working young man who is finishing another post graduate programme and he is about to work on an assignment on Mergers and Acquisitions. I promised I'd try to find some useful web links for him: he doesn't need the answers spelling out for him, just a leg up to get started. The Mergers & Acquisitions Report from Thomson Learning seems to be a good starting point, although the meatiest part of the site is probably for subscribers only: as far as I can tell, registration is free and simple. Not sure how useful this is, UK Business Park page on M&A ... it's a massive list with promise of more lists from previous years! Grant Thornton has a site dedicated to M&A: that looks useful with links to here and there. RBA Information Services has an M&A section that provides links to real examples and useful looking links. The Ofgem is the regulator for Britain's gas and electricity industries and might give some good insights, too. Ananova is a news site that has an M&A news section filled with goodies ... again practical rather than theoretical. There's an American Site that gives a long list of M&A leads that might provide a researcher with some views on who is doing what: they ar relatively small business; and there are US and International links to follow. The Mergers & Acquisitions Advisor has a newsletter and other practical news and advice for its readers. There's a download section, too, that you need to register for to access ... looks free and simple so why not give it a go? The Mergers & Acquisitions Benchmarking Consortium has objectives and missions clearly stated; and there's yet another free and simple registration process to go through! is currently a free association of companies and organizations with mergers and acquisitions organizations. MABC™ conducts benchmarking studies to identify practices that improve the overall operations of the members. MABC™ Mission To identify "Best in Class" mergers & acquisitions processes, which, when implemented, will lead member companies to exceptional performance. There's what is called Mergers & Acquisitions Primer from Find Law in the USA that might be useful to start off any review of the legal aspects of M&A. Reuters Newsagency has an M&A section and down the bottom and left of the page this link takes us to there is an archive section that has a lot of information even in today's link is empty. VentureReporter.NET looks useful as it has a New Research section that takes us immediately to PDF files ... be careful as they take time to download if you don't have a braodband connection! You will need to spend time at this site to get the best from it I think. The Standford Graduate School of Business has announced an Executive Education programme and they publish their topics here: I always find the topics for high quality seminar programmes can be a good source of ideas and inspiration for research. This could be interesting: US Mergers & Acquisitions Calendar for March 2003 Well, Kenneth, that's a lot to think about to start with: a practical rather than a theoretical beginning. Best wishes as ever DW

Putting together this new web site is taking a massive personal effort. By the end of last week I was on the verge of collapse almost. Still, I'm about to announce another new section and I'm working with other people to get my new site fully operational so that you can buy what I am selling! Nera wrote from Jakarta asking what help I could give on ratio analysis and management accounting. Here's what I said: I have just finished a big new section on ratio analysis. When you go to that site you will see at the top of that page and right in the middle, the announcement for this page. When you click on that link you will go straight to the section. The ratio analysis section on biz/ed includes a special database that you can use for yourself and with your students. As far as management accounting is concerned, my site has a he section dedicated to it. I am now setting up a new web site for management accounting that you can take a trial of by going here. There is a lot of information on management accounting on my site. Look at the spreadsheet section of my site, too, for even more that will be useful for you. I hope this is OK but let me know if I can help you further. Best wishes

Took some time out yesterday from work to take Mrs W to Broadway that's about an hour away from home: along the A44 from Oxford. A lovely olde worlde village, a glimpse of which is provided here with a couple of pics I took. We ate at the Italian Restaurant in Broadway and I have to say that the salad that came with the quiche I ordered had certainly never heard of Italy: no olive oil, no balsamic vinegar, no Italian style herbs: just a typical plodding English salad comprising iceberg lettuce, sliced onion and sliced tomato. Mrs W had, ahem, fish and chips! Chips that came out of the freezer and into the deep fat fryer, fish that came from a similar source! The public toilets in the car park just behind the high street deserve a mention: the normal British public toilet is a disgrace with its smell, its damage and its lack of decency; but here we had a clean and very well kept set up. The attendant was even listening to Radio 4 rather than that blethery Radio 1 or the soporific Radio 2. Whilst waiting to be served an ice cream in a shop, came across two products that came as a shock: a toffee cow pat: we used to call them cow clap in the North; but it means the same ... toffee cow droppings! mutton buttons: chocolate covered sheep poo! It has to be asked: who on earth wants to consume products derived, however tenuously, from animal excrement? These things cost around £3 each, too. Here's a couple of pics for you: Broadway's a nice place to visit and the drive there is interesting, too: especially when the sun shines as it did yesterday. DW

I am beavering away at my new web site and although I am making good progress I am stalling at the setting up of the ecommerce end of the thing. Currently in negotiation with a chap about setting up the site, it's relatively slow going. The technical content side of the site is going well and by early next week I should have section 2 finished: a major section on the behaviour of costs. DW

Grace is a student and needed some guidance on stock management (that's inventory management for our American cousins) and credit management. Grace wanted advice on the application of stock and credit systems in a particular organisation ... couldn't give the fine detail but there is a lot on the web to help. Here's what I said. Dear Grace, Stock management: Tesco is a brilliant case study for stock management: they are at the forefront of all developments in supply chain management, including stock control. Look here: I then searched for Tesco at this site and this page shows what they have. The Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply is a good place to look, of course http://www.cips.org/ There's a link on the left that will take you to the "CIPS Purchasing & Supply Management (P&SM) Model" which is a good looking pdf file Take a look at this as it gives headings for you to think about if nothing else. Look here, too, as you can follow through a stock management system that they are selling ... some screenshots and descriptions that could be helpful. Cumbria County Council has a stock management newsletter that you can download at and it might be worth a look. Maybe you would like to look at web based systems. A nice bright and bold site comprising a presentation format. Credit management: You can start here at Credit Management; but will have to register to make much progress: registration's free and painless! This is a commercial site but a lot of content is free. I went to the Institute of Credit Management but couldn't see much of interest, perhaps you can. The Credit Protection Association could have a few things of interest. Another commercial looking site but some useful looking links, I think. Well, Grace, I hope that's been worthwhile and you have a lot of work to do now! Let me know how the seminar went ... don't forget to talk to me! DW

Fiona wanted to know which is better for mangaement information purposes financial or management accounting? Here's what I advised Dear Fiona, This is a popular and interesting question that faces many first year students. The basic rule is that while both financial and management accounting have the same transactions and documentation as each other (materials arrive, invoices and goods received notes flow around the organisation, goods are produced ...), it is management accounting that is the highly focused, internal management information system that provides management with the additional decision making information they need to manage their business as optimally as possible. Financial accounting is a stewardship, externally focused, reporting system. Fiona, you need now to go to my web site and look in the management accounting section where you should find all of the material you need: there's even a table that compares financial with management accounting that should form the basis of your answer. My own text book, Cost and Management Accounting published by Prentice Hall has this table in Chapter 1 and it also has supporting discussion: see if this book is in your library. Take a look at the free trial on my web site, too, Fiona, as I am launching a new commercial side of my site and that will effectively be a text book on the web when it's finished: text, examples, questions and answers, how to work with spreadsheets, real life tips and examples ... ideal for a student such as yourself both now and for the rest of your time as a student. The site will be modular in that you will be able to buy just what you need and no more. I have finished the first section, Introduction to Management Accounting, and once I've got the ecommerce part of the site up and running I will go live. Section two is nearing completion, too, The Behaviour of Costs. That's enough to get you started, Fiona. See how you get on and let me know if you need any more help. Best wishes DW

A glorious weekend that saw me milling around the garden watering things and pretending I knew what I was doing! Some more of my seeds are poking their heads through the soil now! On Sunday I made myself some soup and feel the need to share it with the world! Carrot, Carraway and Coriander Soup tablespoon of oil small onion halved then sliced medium sized carrot chopped into pieces half a litre of vegetable stock or water and vegetable stock cube carraway seeds chopped coriander leaves lightly fry the onion in the oil until it has turned transparent then add the carrot and heat through for a couple of minutes add the stock/cube and water and half a teaspoon of carraway seeds and bring to boil boil gently until the carrots have cooked through liquidise return to pan, add coriander and a few more carrawy seeds then bring back to boil then take off the heat serve immediately You'll be stunned at how delicious it is! Mrs W couldn't stand it. DW

A question on the general background to and meaning of deferred tax came in from my old friend Maggie. Here is a summary of what I have found. Firstly, a definition of deferred tax A liability that results from income that has already been earned for accounting purposes but not for tax purposes. From the ASB in the UK, a very useful summary of FRS 19 FRS19 has replaced SSAP 15 and here is an ASB summary of the status of SSAP15 A PDF document from a BOC annual report that has a brief word on how they deal with deferred tax in their accounts. Also from BOC All UK companies must adopt this new standard for accounting periods ending on or after 23 January 2002. Under the previous accounting standard, SSAP15, no provision was required for deferred tax that was unlikely to become payable in the foreseeable future. Under FRS19, provision must be made for deferred tax no matter how remote the likely payment date or the extent to which payment may be continually deferred by future investment decisions or transactions of the Group. Within BOC, tax is deferred mainly as a result of accelerated tax depreciation of capital investments. The effect of applying FRS19 alone in 2001 would have been to raise the underlying tax charge by approximately 6 per cent. Some indication of what is important about deferred tax taken from an advertisement for a Deferred Tax seminar: Tax in Company Accounts With the Emphasis on Deferred Tax Of particular interest to all involved in preparing or understanding the taxation entries in statutory accounts. The course will review the UK corporate tax system, including recent major changes, and their implications for accounting and disclosure requirements. Deferred tax is very much in the news with the change to full provision now being mandatory. Coverage will include a detailed review of the new Accounting Standard and its impact on different corporate sectors, including the effect on dividend cover, banking covenants, past acquisitions and the pros and cons of discounting. Programme • The UK corporate tax regime and recent major changes • FRS16 - Tax in Company Accounts • FRS19 - Accounting for Deferred Tax • The impact of the change from 'partial' to 'full' provision • Implementation • Quantifying the prior period adjustment • Revisiting past acquisitions • Discounting the deferred tax • Case studies Very useful notes from AccountingWEB entitled FRS 19 - Deferred tax: Appendix 1 (Notes to the Accounts) and this from the same source: FRS 19 – Deferred tax Solomon Hare gives expert guidance on FRS 19 – Deferred tax. There's a Word document to download from there too. Here'a an article from the ACCA on FRS 19 Deferred Tax by Paul Robins: it was published on 1 March 2001 so be careful just in case it's a bit out of date. That should be useful everyone. DW

Spraznikom: today is Nauryz as celebrated in Kazakhstan. Nauryz is the new year celebration that coincides with the Spring Equinox. In fact this gives rise to one of the good reasons to spend some time in Kazakhstan: three or four new year parties. 31 December, 7 January, 22 March and another one that I've forgotten. Anyway, to the millions of people from all over Kazakhstan, enjoy the day. I believe this is also a festival for all Muslims: let's hope for a happy day for everyone, despite the goings on in Iraq. DW

A question from a regular of mine caused the cobwebs of my economic knowledge to become firmly lodged so I hie'd me off to a library in search of the very simple answer. I found the answer I was looking for quite quickly and felt the walk in justified more than just a five minute read. So I looked at the Oxford English Disctionary, full version, letter 'F'. I bet you didn't know that the word flat occupies about three pages in the OED. It does! In Who's Who 2002 there is only one person called Utting and there are no Duncan Williamsons. David Beckham is there and so is that dunderhead chef Anthony Worrall Thompson ... he has hundreds of names all in a row and I was a bit surprised to find that he's older than I am. Debrett's Peerage is a fountain of knowledge and you can read about such luminaries as Jeffrey Archer and his appalling attempts at dressing up his schlastic attainments: a minor public school in Somerset and Brasenose College Oxford: it doesn't say that he was at Oxford for only a year and that he was on a sports not an academic scholarship. Peter Carrington is still there and there are Lords Spiritual by the dozen. There are Lords and Ladies that most of us never have and never will hear about. Since 1952 Phil the Greek (the Duke of Edinburgh to the rest of us) has been granted precedence over all men in the realm including, I was surprised to read, the Heir Apparent: that's Charles. That three feathered emblem that Charles carries around with him is nothing, apparently, to do with being Prince of Wales: they are not the Prince of Wales' feathers, it is the emblem of the Heir Apparent. That book costs £250 by the way and I am sure Abingdon is riddled with people who are fighting over themselves to read this mighty tome rather than the 10 - 30 other books that could have been bought for the same amount of money. DW

Some of the seeds I planted just over a week ago have germinated and I'm like a child when I see that. Childish enthusiasm will step aside when we start eating these plants! Aaaaargh! Planted loads more seeds last night to: herbs, climbers and flowers. Watch this space in June or July when I take some pictures. Sorry, they'll be here!!! DW

I went to Birmingham on Saturday to the Education Show: an exhibition for teachers to meet suppliers, government departments and each other! Three huge halls at the NEC filled with stalls that had all sorts of things on display. I came away with three carrier bags filled with booklets, papers and CD ROMS. I met a few people but I have to confess that the event didn't meet all of of my expectations. Never mind, I got a few ideas that could surface here in a while! The drive up was cold: really cold weather. The drive back was sweltering as the sun had broken through the mist and was boiling me half to death. I took a walk to Tesco on Saturday evening and had done the same the night before: 20 - 30 minute round trip including shopping. Then today, Sunday, Mrs W and I went to the garden centre to buy another cherry tree as our existing tree needed a cross pollinator ... now it's got one! We bought a peach tree too, plus an Azalea and some flower seeds. Cost a fortune and then Dima and I had to do some digging and moving. Mrs W, who's serioulsy into Feng Shui, was working on the positioning of the trees to bring out the auspicious and that meant digging up and transplanting three plants and then planting the three new trees/bush. Dima did much of the work, including spraying yours truly with ice cold water as we watered our new plants in. Half way through the digging we came across a major obstacle and big brick ... obstacle turned out to be a large piece of wood that took us ages to shift. Having identified it as wood, having thought that it was stone because of its colour and the sound the spade made when hitting it, Dima announced that it was probably a coffin or buried treasure. Of course it was neither! We came across half bricks and other stones, too that made or lives so much more interesting. We did a good job overall and the Spring and summer should help us to reap our rewards. Last year was disappointing as three of our then four fruit trees were hit by pests and didn't produce anything like anything decent ... the cherries blossomed madly but couldn't be pollinated, of course. I was also filled with glee when I spotted that some of the rocket seeds I planted last Sunday have germinated! Hooray! There you are, more slop and I'm kerry packered with all this digging and walking. DW

An unusual question and a sensible question came in together ... I answered the sensible one! Odd one: I have been told that THere's a great web site for Queries... Could you please give me the address please? thx. Sensible one: I have been searching for more details information about "off balance sheet financing", most of the definition related to joint ventures, R&D partnerships, and operating leases. However, the essay I need to write is about the FRS5 "Reporting the substance of Transactions" distingush between items that should be included in the balance sheet and those that should not... what is it related to Joint Venture,,partnership?? What kind of things shall I write to make more sense?????? Here's what I told this chap! Dear Lau, I don’t know what Queries web site you mean: is it for accounting, computing … ? I have to say that I am not an expert on financial reporting standards but here are a couple of pointers. Go to this page to see a list of library resources that will help you here: this assumes you are able to use a good English language library. The link on this page to Substance over Form didn’t work for me [UPDATE: the custodian of that list, Chris Lamb, has written to tell me that the link has now been fixed]; but this one did: this one There is a link on that second page to a case study that you might be able to use: this case includes discussion of UK Standards as well as IAS and others. Here’s an article from the ACCA I found this by searching the ACCA web site with reporting the substance of transactions. Repeat that search and you will find other useful links to articles and so on … such as this one From the UK government here is a brief summary about FRS5 and the PFI and in similar vein but much more comprehensive and here’s a Word document Here’s FRS5 in action in an annual report They know a lot about financial reporting at the Motley Fool so here they are then! Well, that should be enough to get you started: let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help. Best wishes DW

I have finally cracked the lousy lawn case: Starlings! I got up the other day to find a herd (?) of Starlings all over said lawn and there they were taking rich pickings. So I suppose they are the bleeders who have, in fact, eaten all of the grass seed I sowed at the end of last summer that I thought had simply failed to germinate. Gits! They'd better watch out. The back garden contains a host of golden daffodils now. Well, OK, not exactly a host: more of a hostette. But a good showing anyway. Really strong and pretty they are too. My other bulbs are coming up bit by bit, too: dwarf Tulips are pretty in pink at the moment and there's more to come. Off to Birmingham tomorrow. Anyone else going there? DW

Great news for anyone wanting a new ratio analysis resource. Over last summer I put together a series of pages for a business education site on ratio analysis and they have now got it ready to go live ... I think it's good and I'll provide the link once they are ready. Hold your breath it's worth it!! DW

Talking to son Dima the other day and Rene Descartes' dictum cogito ergo sum cropped up, as it does; and since Dima is into using the word ergo in his work at the moment, he was keen to learn this extension. A couple of days later he asked me to repeat the phrase, by way of saying ... er ... ergo tsum ... well, that's what it sounded like and, given my magnificent fluency in the Russian language I launched back with I think therefore I shop! An explanation is painfully needed I hear you cry. cogito ergo sum means I think therefore I am and Rene Descartes is famous as a mathematician of yore, friend of the Queen of Sweden and all round idle Jack! tsum is Russian for a particular department store to be found throughout the former Soviet Union ... it's Gum in Moscow therefore cogito ergo sum was corrupted to cogito ergo tsum ... I think therefore I shop. Oh, flaming Nora, was that worth it? Made me laugh anyway. DW

Vincent wrote to me a while ago and apart from forgetting about him and feeling achamed because of it, here is what I could find for him about labour turnover and labour stability. Duncan, My name is Vincent and I am a final year undergraduate ... currently in the process of collecting data for a disertation on the Analysis of Labour Tournover. Whilst browsing the web for relevant sites I stumbled across your web-site and discovered the following page: Labour Stability at www.duncanwil.co.uk You discuss a Labour Stability ratio and its importance in analysing Labour tournover ... I was also wondering if you had any suggestions of further information which I may find useful, such as web-links which you know of or titles of texts for me to read? I appreciate the time you have taken to read this and look forward to hearing from you. Kindest regards, Vincent After having given Vincent the all clear to use my materials, I then did a search for him that produced the following: Dear Vincent, As promised here are a few pointers for you although I imagine you have already gathered a large number of such things: The Independent Labour Organisation is a must at www.ilo.org although I did a couple of searches and wasn’t fully satisfied! In their KLIM, key indicators of the labour market, section they have a lot of interesting articles that may be of use to you. The european industrial relations observatory on-line has a basic article for you but gives some costs relating to labour turnover by occupational groupings. You might find their navigation bar on the left of the page useful. Although it has been written in the most appalling academic language, you might tease something from this. They have some interesting diagrams at the end of their paper. This might be a stepping off point for several links: training press releases Around 5 years old and based on 1990-91 data this paper claims to be innovative and is probably worth a read if you haven’t seen it before If you want to be sector specific this kind of thing is useful Since I’ll be sharing this search with other people, don’t forget the page on my own web site (see above) ... this is the only page I can find that discusses labour STABILITY, by the way … no, here’s another one ... a very comprehensive introduction to this area with suggestions for further reading If you are like me and have an obsession for calculations, take a look at this Australian site entitled Costing Labour Turnover ACAS has a glossary of terms that looks useful despite their astonishing background graphic!! Well, Vincent, that seems to be the best I can do for now. Once more my sincere apologies for forgetting about you for a while and I hope you find these pointers useful. Best wishes DW

In an idle moment I went to a web site that claims to be able to find jobs for everyone. I carried out a search for overseas jobs and was given 19 jobs to select from in ... Glasgow Shropshire Edinburgh Nationwide West Yorkshire ... Now, if I were living in, say, Hungary or Singapore or Guatemala these jobs could be considered to be overseas; but since I'm based in the UK, nay England, then they are hardly overseas are they? DW

I'm almost ready to launch my TRIAL web pages on management accounting ... keep your eyes peeled. It takes a long time to mark up such pages, given the state of my knowladge and the rest of it. Phew! As they say in our poorest daily newspapers! DW

Laura came back with this, concerning Step Costs: see yesterday's posts: Thank you very much for the information. I think the machine example is a very good one! Laura Another satisfied customer! DW

My old email friend Vicki wrote with a problem concerning the entity concept. Here is how I answered Vicki's question. Dear Vicki, All the entity concept tells you is written here Entity Concept at www.duncanwil.co.uk. The addition of the word separate is not important since the separate entity concept is the same as the entity concept! In terms of the situation you are now dealing with, Sophia Smythe, the issue is how the accountant should treat the £2,500 of goods that she has withdrawn for her own use. What you might be suggesting is that this has happened: Debit Cost of Goods Sold a/c £2,500 Credit Stock a/c £2,500 This takes the goods into cost of goods sold and therefore the trading and profit and loss account and therefore it has an effect on profit, reducing it by £2,500. What should have happened is this: Debit Drawings a/c £2,500 Credit Stock a/c £2,500 The effect of this transaction is really that Sophia has effectively withdrawn the £2,500 worth of goods from her capital and the effect of that should be shown directly in the capital account that now falls by the full amount. The profit/loss should be unaffected by this transaction and when you make these adjustments you will see that profit increases by £2,500. I hope this is clear … let me know if not. Best wishes as ever

Good news for a recent correspondent of mine from Italy: By the way, I`ve got an "A" grade for the last two essays (finance and marketing) for which you helped me so much...... Thanks again, Duncan. That was the best grade I`ve received until now. To find you by Internet was really good luck!!! It pays to get involved with www.duncanwil.co.uk DW

Laura wrote with an interesting question Hello, I am an accounting professor ... Last week, we discussed Step costs. I gave an example of step costs (janitors, supervisors) which typically have a large step. A student asked what type of cost would be represented by a small step? Can you provide a good example of a small step cost? I'd appreciate any help you could provide. Laura I replied, semi shamefully, as follows: Hi Laura, An interesting question that I’d never thought about before. Step costs can be looked at from two points of view: step costs such as supervision and management costs step fixed costs relating to costs associated with fixed assets As to size, we could imagine a number of situations that might cover this problem, even if they are all similar situations. A machine could, for example, be highly specialised but only be able to produce 50 units a week. It may be relatively inexpensive to buy and run but if demand grew suddenly from, say, 40 units a week to 75 units a week, a new machine would be needed … this situation contrasts the situation in which a supervisor supervises, say, 30 people … I’m not sure I’ve been as helpful as you would like but in your position I might be tempted to ask the student who asked the question to provide an example in answer to his own question! Alternatively, I have in the past added such a question to the end of an assignment or term paper for a few additional marks. At least someone somewhere will provide a decent solution even if our own brain cells are inadequate! Well, mine anyway! Best wishes and let me know what else you can come up with. DW

Sunday was a gardening day: legs like jelly after a couple of hours hard labour that I haven't done for a while. I tidied up the harb patch a bit, pruned the rose bushes, potted a thyme plant to help it get more established and then planted loads of herb seeds: chives, dill, parsley and a few more. The weather was windy as it tried to blow all of my seeds away ... it failed! I succeeded and am now looking forward to scads of herbs from mid Spring onwards. I also tidied up the netting that the clematis is attached to and that looks much better now: Mrs W wanted to completely redesign the netting but I resisted and carried on regardless. After all ... My football team, Burnley, were playing in the quarter final of the FA Cup and their match was televised ... I finished gardening just in time to wash myself up and settle down to watch the match that Burnley lost 2: 0 to Watford. So, good luck to Watford for the next round: the semi final. Making some progress on my new projects and I'll have a trial series of pages uploaded on a password protected section of my web site shortly ... you need to apply to get a password! Oh, on Saturday I made a ginger cake from the recipe sister Susan gave me and it's an absolute stunner: very simple to make and scrumptious to eat! DW

Richard Jones wrote I wonder if you can help. ... how to treat expenses such as professional fees, decorating etc that have been incurred pre-opening and which have been paid for out of start up capital. If I show the start up capital as the capital employed how do i show these 'expenses'in the top half of teh balance sheet. I hope you can help me Reagrds RJ I replied as follows: If I understand the problem correctly, we have a business that has, say £10,000 capital invested in pre incorporation expenses incurred: professional fees (assume £200), decorating (assume £150)... paid out of the £10,000 If that is correct then do the following: Debit Cash/Bank a/c £10,000 Credit Capital a/c £10,000 Debit Professional Fees £200 Credit Cash/Bank a/c £200 Debit Property Repairs a/c £150 Credit Cash/Bank a/c £150 On the other hand, if you mean: a business that has, say, £10,000 capital invested in pre incorporation expenses incurred: professional fees (assume £200), decorating (assume £150) ... paid out in addition to the capital investment of £10,000 Debit Cash/Bank a/c £10,000 Credit Capital a/c £10,000 Debit Professional Fees £200 Credit Capital a/c £200 Debit Property Repairs a/c £150 Credit Capital a/c £150 Let me know if you think the CPU problem has inflicted my own internal CPU but I think this is what you mean. Best wishes DW

I know I'm a bit late but let me say Congratulations to the women of the world on International Women's Day ... be happy on the 8th of March as they say in the former Soviet Union. Mrs W got a lovely suprise bunch of flowers: delivered to the door by Interflora this afternoon: courtesy of Dima and yours truly. DW

Lashing rain yesterday and driving winds made for a happy to be at home feeling. I was disappointed yesterday to find that the software I was hoping would help me to automate the conversion from Word file to HTML with all sorts of bells and whistles won't run with Office XP. I'm disappointed since I have to do a lot of manual work now until they sort out that problem. DW

I was a very happy chappy yesterday as I solved a problem that the whole world was befuddled by: my CPU usage is 100% problem. I've bored you with this before but my Task Manager kept telling me that my CPU was constantly 100% in use by something inside the SYSTEM process. NO idea what that meant and even having asked a number of techies I couldn't get rid of the problem UNTIL I found that the computer worked OK in Portsmouth and then again when I moved it from downstairs to upstairs at home ... I got the link: if I boot in battery mode or switch from mains to battery mode when the problem arises, the problem disappears. I can then reconnect the power supply and it will be fine for a while: maybe hours. I don't know the root cause of this problem but I am sharing my little success with as many people as possible in the hope that someone, somewhere will help out! DW

Someone somewhere in Abingdon Council has decided that they need TWO new Pelican crossings: light controlled pedestrian crossings. They have put one near where we live and I think it is in one of the most inappropriate places possible: I don't believe anyone crosses the road there. I'll monitor it ... must cost thousands and thousands to erect things like that. A Zebra crossing would have been much more appropriate and much less costly. The other one they built is on a BEND in the road nearer to town. Who are the people who think of these things? DW

My lawn looks really nice now: at night ... reminds me of tha brilliant lines from Gilbert and Sullivan about the young man who finds himself a wife: he fell in love with the rich attorney's daughter and she may very well pass for 43 in the dusk with the light behind her Still, the daffodils bulbs I planted last year are all coming into bloom now: the crocuses appeared a couple of weeks ago! Mrs W has led me to generate the phrase See man, give man job. Dima and I are being hounded at the moment as soon as we heave into Mrs W's view! Lovely weather in Portsmouth as me and my mate John took a walk along the prom in Southsea: huge P&O ferries floating by, massive tankers saling along into Portsmouth docks. The parks and gardens department down there keep their parks and gardens in excellent condition, even though the gardeners park their vans and lorries in the most outrageously illegal ways and places. The drives down and back were good, incident free and not busy and cluttered at all. Mrs W suggested that since I was there, I could call into the Chinese restaurant we ate at a while ago and order a take away ... since she'd thrown away the take away menu, we negotiated what I should order over the mobile phone as I stood outside in blustery cold weather with lorries hurtling past, passers by wondering what on earth I was doing ... worth it though and we tucked in on my arrival home at around 10pm. DW

Germine wanted information on accounting in Malaysia and how to meet a Brazilian accountant! Here's what I wrote; and having seen some of the goings on at the Carnival in rio this week, I'd like to say that there are some Brazilian looking accountants that I'd like to meet, too! Serious now: Hi Germine, Well, I don't know much about Malaysia and its accounting regime, but this is what I suggest you do: I went to www.iasplus.com and found that Malaysia doesn't use International Financial Reporting Standards (IAS). However, search this site for Malaysia and you will find a very useful page at http://www.iasplus.com/country/malaysia.htm that lists all of the latest changes in Malaysian accounting over the last two+ years. They also list these web sites: The Malaysian Institute of Accountants and The Malaysian Association of Certified Public Accountants. They also tell us that Malaysia is included in the IFAD GAAP Convergence Studies and they have a link for that too. Go to www.kpmg.com.sg which is KPMG's Singapore office which seems to be the headquarters of their work in Malaysia and you can see that they have links on Malaysia ... do a search on this site for Malaysia. PriceWaterhouseCoopers are at http://www.pwcglobal.com/: you can find their site for Malaysia from the country link and go to http://www.pwcglobal.com/my/eng/main/home/index.html As for finding Brazilian accountants, I suggest you follow the links I have given in my page on Brazilian accounting and find the contact us details and write to them: someone will probably reply! Best wishes and let me know if you need any more help on this: as a matter of interest, what is you interest in Malaysia and Brazil ... they don't seem connected to me!! DW

Have you been to see my page on how to begin the financial analysis part of a case study? Go on, ruin yourself ... the case is in the financial accounting section and it's called PhotoInd Ltd. I've had rave reviews! Off to Portsmouth tomorrow: let's see what that brings. That follows on a visit to the Quack to see if he needs to remove some skin!! All will be revealed! DW

Good grief, the weekend came and went and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday came and went, well Wednesday almost. I learned about raclette from a lilly pad of Frogs ... sorry, from a room full of very nice French people. Joke ... don't be offended in the slightest. I spent a really nice Saturday evening with some friends in Didcot and they introduced me to raclette and raclette cheese. One of the party had done a round the Sahara Desert trip in 1985 and it was interesting talking to him about that: Michael Palin wasn't the first! We played scrabble and I didn't win: the only native English speaker in the room and I came second. Along the way we had attempts at fobbing us off with 'goy' and 'jean'(!) among others ... all other players were French. How could I lose? Well, I came second and only lost on the count back when I had to have my left over 'Q' deducted from my score. I'm making progress with my ideas for books (e books?) and presentations and goodness knows what. I am about to reveal my first one: introduction to management accounting. It's now late on Wednesday and I have been suffering from that computer problem I thought I'd got rid of a while back. It's a real puzzler but it's back now and won't go away. Not a virus, not a parasite ... who knows? DW

Follow up from Farshid led to additional goodies. By 10 am UK time this morning, I'll have changed www.duncanwil.co.uk/conflicts.html I don’t have a problem with identifying the 4 user groups; however it’s the conflict details I’m having trouble with. I know of one conflict of interest example which is: The shareholders might exhibit a degree of mistrust and be concerned that the directors will act in their own best interests even to the detriment of the company. There may even be hostility towards a potential competitor and the directors are unlikely to volunteer information about a company’s performance if that could be used by a competitor. Management might therefore be tempted to withhold information or to distort any figures that they do publish. Or, the company may hide debt figures to attract more investors. This is how the interests conflict as investors want clear figures of debt or other figures, but the management wants more investment. So, see what I did to follow up. DW

More productivity. Two more sets of questions leading to three more pages. New pages on Brazilian Accounting developments ... www.duncanwil.co.uk/brazacc.html Environmental and Sustainability Reporting ... www.duncanwil.co.uk/envsust.html Potential Conflicts of Interest in Financial Reprorting ... www.duncanwil.co.uk/conflicts.html More excellence from yours truly. DW

Grace asked about inflation accounting: for a university assignment by the look of it. Grace's time was severely limited so I gave her a top of the head response. Not much specific detail in what follows, but it gives a decent general overview. historical cost accounting (hca) is the situation in which accountants record revenue, expenditure and asset acquisition and disposal at historical cost: that is, the actual amounts of money, or money's worth, received or paid to complete the transaction. the big advantage of hca is that it leads to absolute certainty and it fits in perfectly with the cash flow statement. Hca tells us exactly what has been paid and what has been received and therefore there is no doubt about balance sheet amounts. The alternatives, where accountants attempt to take inflation into account, can lead to many problems. There have been several forms of current cost accounting, purchasing power accounting and so on since the mid 1970s that have been proposed as alternatives to hca. The reason the alternatives have not survived, and IAS 15 on inflation accounting is about to be replaced, if it hasn't been already, is that no one can agree on the best way to represent accounting values. Hca provides definite values, other methods don't! the disadvantages of hca include the fact that hca values can relate to transactions that could be a year old, 10 years old and as much as 100 years old. It's true that some businesses have old equipment and old stocks (inventories) that are still working well but that were bought a long time ago: the problem is that the acquisition value may be out of date and so the balance sheet is showing out of date values. Taxation problems come with inflation accounting. In times of high levels of inflation, profits are inflated and therefore the tax bill tends to increase: this is the reason that inflation accounting was developed in the UK and elsewhere in the 1970s and onwards. Guess what, though? Accountants found solutions to the inflation accounting problem that led to lower taxation but the Inland Revenue didn't like what the accountants had done and rejected the accountants' proposals ... and so it went on. comments: the UK and the IASC have both attempted to provide inflation accounting standards and both have had to admit defeat. The UK saw several inflation accounting committees in the 1970s and onwards as accountants attempted to get to grips with this issue. Then accounting standards appeared ... and disappeared. The problem is that when inflation is a problem, inflation accounting is a problem. When, as now, inflation is not a problem, no one cares about inflation accounting. However, government departments do still prepare current cost accounting statements! the way forward? this is a strange issue that tends to be unimportant as accountants don't like it. Many people believe that cash based accounting gives plenty of indication of the solution to inflation accounting problems. NOTE: if you want a considered answer from me on any subject that I can get to grips with, please give me enough time! DW

On Tuesday night there we were minding our own business when a wasp flew into the living room. In February. In England. Couldn't believe it! After a chase it disappeared. Then it reappeared an hour or so later after it had warmed up at which point I was able to stun it and fling it back outside! Forgot to tell you that on the drive back from Yorkshire I came down the M1 motorway ... nightmare. Got to junction 21 around Leicester and the signs said be prepared to queue for a while. We queued. And queued. And queued. Then the traffic on the other carriageway stopped completely: there was an accident there and they closed the motorway for miles. We plodded on and on and then after about an hour and around 10 miles we took off at normal speeds with nary a sign of why we had gone so slowly. I felt sorry for the other people on the other carriageway as they had come to a complete stop for miles behind the accident. Consider that so many people were put to great inconvenience by someone's dreadful driving. Watched with some amusement as some smart Alek broke through the barriers as he clearly felt he shouldn't be among the mass of people to have to stop and wait. As we reached him, so did a policeman and he was doubtless booked for his crime. Nevertheless, as the policeman returned, the miscreant didn't so he probably got home on time whilst the rest of them didn't. Selfish geezer! I hope his fine is massive. DW

There is an inscription just above the entrance to Stoodley Pike that I downloaded from this site: STOODLEY PIKE A PEACETIME MONUMENT ERECTED BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION COMMENDED IN 1814 TO COMMEMORATE THE SURRENDER OF PARIS TO THE ALLIES AND FINISHED AFTER THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO WHEN PEACE WAS DECLAR- -ED IN 1815. BY A STRANGE COINCIDENCE THE PIKE FELL ON THE DAY THE RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR LEFT LONDON BEFORE THE DECLARATION OF WAR WITH RUSSIA AND WAS REBUILT WHEN PEACE WAS RESTORED 1856 REPAIRED AND LIGHTENING CONDUCTOR 1889 DW

Here's some snaps from my weekend away. for those of you who don't know here's a picture of a real dry stone wall. A dry stone wall is called dry because it has been built out of stone but WITHOUT cement or fixings of any kind: Here is the chronicle of the walk to Stoodley Pike in pics: the start of the walk ... the Pike just comes into view now Dima huddled for warmth ... the directional hoar frost! Don't tell Dima's mother but he forgot his hat, scarf, gloves ... we shared a pair of gloves! Now back to Harry Ramsden's, beginning with a lovely welcoming view on a freezing Friday night This is what fish and chips are all about! There are a couple of not in the least bit misty pics of our walk at Halifax Today that you might care to take a look at: good description of where we went together with details of other walks in the area. DW

Saturday morning 22 February seemed like a good time to take a walk. So sister Susan, Dima and I drove from Halifax to Mankinholes above Todmorden (home town for sister and I) and set off for Stoodley Pike: a huge blackened stone monument to Britain's victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. This walk is not far but it starts of with a long uphill drag through sheep farming land. Rough grass, no trees, rocky and muddy by turns. Very misty morning unfortunately, otherwise the views up and around the Calder Valley are spectacular at times. After half a mile or so, the walk reaches the edge of the moor and it's then a level walk to the Pike. Again, rocky and muddy but now with fog and a rattling, icy wind. Lesser mortals would have faded and turned back of course but we soldiered on! On a normal day the Pike is visible for miles but today we had to get to within 30 yards before it suddenly appeared out of the fog: it looks eery like this. Dima had sped on ahead and when we got to the Pike we found him huddled in a corner of it in the lee of the wind. Only Dima and I went up to the balcony of the Pike, Susan having done that many times! I last did this when I was 16 years old I think ... that's a while ago. One of the dangers of going into and up the monument is that the stairs are unlit and for a short distance it is pitch black ... and it has been known for sheep to come hurtling down the steps as the seek to avoid being trapped by humans. So a good shout and a few claps of the hand at the very beginning to alert the sheep that you are and hope that this gets them down BEFORE you start to climb. The wind brought hoar frost with it and the wind came in so strongly that it left the hoar frost arranged in patterns rather than just depositing it. Our journey down took us beyond the pike and down onto the nearby Longdon Road, more of a path, and to our family graveyard at Mankinholes where we paid our respects to parents, brothers and sister. On to the Top Brink pub where we tucked into gooey puddings and custard and cups of coffee! A rattling, bracing, 4 mile walk. Must go back in better weather! DW

Did you want to hear that the lawn is fine?: a little yellow rather than green but it has survived and the mornings have warmed up anyway. Spent the weekend in Yorkshire with brothers and sisters and their families and that was a good boozy lack of sleep do that was enjoyed by all. The big event was an evening in Guisely near Leeds at Harry Ramsden's 75 year old chip shop. Slap up dinner of fish, chips, mushy peas, scraps, tea, bread and butter: can't beat it. Vegetarianism suspended for one meal! Here's a story to make your hair curl. There's a school in West Yorkshire that has just had a new science block built. A good building by all accounts that should serve the community well enough. However, just when they thought they'd finished the building work and were thinking of moving in, they realised that they had forgotten to install the water and gas services ... not just in one or two rooms but in the entire block. I wonder if anyone has been hauled over the coals for that? A couple of true conversations for you: Number 1 Yorkshireman to Yorkshiremen at a small gathering where food and beer were on offer: mmmm, this Lancashire cheese is really good. Whilst Tyke is munching, Lancastrian enters the room and sidles up to the food Yorkshireman to Lancastrian: This Lancashire cheese is rubbish! Number 2 Man 1 enters toilet in a pub and greets Man 2 who is already there doing his business. Man 1: Hello, alright? Man 2: No, none of my lottery numbers came up. All my plans have gone awry! Man 1: Sorry for that! End of pithy conversation!! DW

The lawn: it's never been so frosty! Ever since I hacked at my grass we've had the deepest of deep frosts and since it's a north facing lawn it doesn't always warm up during the day. Mrs W said that "The house at the end has a very green lawn so why don't I ask them how they do it?" Pride well and truly besmirched I retorted with "My lawn is the best on the entire estate normally and it only started to go funny on me at the end of last summer as the new seed I sowed failed to take and the weedkiller that I applied killed the weeds, the grass and the *$!??*@ soil." So what's a chap to do? I will have the best lawn again, never fear, even if I have to returf the thing. It's only a small patch and if Chelsea football club can returf their entire football pitch in the middle of January, I'm sure I can do the same come the Spring. DW

Here's a thing: any electricians or radio hams out there? The other day I was in the kitchen listening to the radio and blethering with Dima when I picked up the kettle so that I could fill it and then make a cup of tea. As soon as I'd got the kettle away from its base the radio went funny. I thought, that's odd, and put it back: the radio sorted itself out. I picked up the kettle again to test it and again the radio went funny. This evening whilst attacking a pile of vegetables as I attempted to convince them that they ought to be a decent curry, I tried to fill the kettle again and again the radio went all skew whiff on me. This only happens with Radio 4, all other, inferior, stations being immune; and kettle and radio are about 1 metre apart. Any answers?? DW

At last here are a couple of snaps from my Dorchester sojourn! A Cob wall: what's a Cob wall? Well, you can see that it's thatched for a start and why would one thatch an ordinary wall? The story is that in the days when bricks were scarce, people would use cob to construct walls, houses and the like. Cob is a mixture of straw and earth all pounded together to form a paste that they then use to render the wall. Since Cob's not that stable in the rain, they thatch the top of the wall for protection and there you are. More historical excellence from you know who! The Toll House at the Abbey. A hexagonal hip roof for you! Notice the way the windows point in two directions: to see the traffic coming from left and right. The bridge that carried the toll in days of yore is to the right as we look at this picture. The bridge that's there now is a nineteenth century monstrosity: not Victorian gothic tripe but just a very plain old thing. Apparently the toll house has been a sweet shop in its time as well as being a toll house; and at the moment I am reliably informed it is owned by an architect! Hope you enjoyed these snaps! DW

I took a risk after we got back from Wantage: I mowed the lawn! I was sick and tired of looking at my tired and bedraggled lawn so even though the weather's cold and not ideal for lawn maintenance, I mowed it. I did it roughly overall but after I'd finished I felt a lot better. I then washed the car with icy cold water and sponge. I went in search of car shampoo but Mrs W informed me that I (that's me, myself and NOT, most definitely NOT, her) had thrown the bottle away when I had FINISHED it. Piffle! So, it's got the muck off but it still needs more cleaning. Then there's the mud inside the vehicle, too! Dima wore a pullover on Saturday night that showed off his athletic looking figure rather well. I said, why can't I have a pullover like that: to enahance and show off my physique in the same way. This is true: it turns out I was wearing exactly the same style of pullover as Dima but whilst his is burgundy mine is very dark grey. Oh! I then concluded that my pullover has either been hideously stretched or they got the design wrong and that's why I look like a sack of spuds!! Anybody want to see the proof? Can't win, eh? DW

Out and about again, folks! This time, Dima and I went rummaging around Wantage: an old and well establish small town around 8 miles or so from where we live. Looking at the Ordnance Survey map before we went out, we found lots of "Gallops": not knowing why, we sallied forth. We were also looking for evidence of the age of settlements from the maps, how things that were green and speckly on the map looked in real life, how contours panned out in reality. The gallops are for racing horses. Newbury race course in near by and we came across the Valley of the Racehorse with all of these gallops in it. Interesting to see something I'd never even thought of before but it makes perfect sense once you've realised what's happening! The villages around Wantage, Letcombe Bassett, Lambourn and so on are all old and well established. Whilst some of the properties were a bit cheaper than I thought they might be, they were still expensive. It's also still the case that there are many 15th, 16th and 17th century working men's cottages that are now inhabited by very wealthy people. So the cottage that your great, great, great, great grandparents lived in as they tilled the soil or hew stones and drew water from is now occupied by an architect or an accountant or a race horse trainer and he's paid £500,000 for it! There is a very attractive Alms House building in Lambourn: it has a central water well, too, just like the better maintained Alms Houses in Ewelme. We found a new Dobbin: remember the sad looking, old horse we found in January? We found two lithe, younger horses this time and as we ran towards them shouting "Dobbin, Dobbin!", they hurtled towards us with love and affection in their eyes. We talked across a gap between two fences, barbed wire attached to one of them; but the mint I held out to them didn't hold enough attraction for them. They were nervous, perhaps skittish and they wouldn't take the bait! Our short lived but intense relationship was smashed when some aging mountain bikers stopped 5 yards away from us as they plotted their route: maps in hand, bikes between their thighs and loud voices spewing from their mouths. Who knows what Dobbin and I could have gone on to achieve? We drove along the Ridgeway: a dirt track that was wet and a bit uneven. Reminded me of some of the easier driving I did in Malawi. The Beemer coped though. Every time I got out of the car mud seemed to fly at the soles of my shoes and firmly attach itself there. Even when I took the time to wipe it off with sticks, grass, gate posts, the small step between clean and mud caked was simply never far enough. Have some cleaning to do today. DW